Become a BCN Monitor!

The Bird Conservation Network (BCN) is recruiting volunteers to collect information about birds throughout the Chicago region in 2021 with an emphasis on breeding birds.

BCN is a coalition of birding groups mostly located in Northern Illinois – including COS as a founding member - and has conducted its bird monitoring program since 1999. Hundreds of local birdwatchers, including COS members, have gathered data that has been collated and analyzed over the years to reveal important trends in bird populations in the region. Bird monitoring also is fun and important! What could be better than watching birds in great habitat and recording what you see for scientific and land management purposes?

All the information you need about bird monitoring and how to volunteer for the program is available on BCN’s website, but the basics are: once you know where your site is, you must visit it twice during June to capture breeding season bird population and at least three more monitoring visits throughout the year. The bird monitor’s job is to record all birds at prescribed points on their route through visual and oral identification. Each site has finite dimensions in which you count birds. After each visit, you upload your data to BCN’s online survey data base.

Please browse through BCN’s Breeding Birds Population Trends of the Chicago Region from 1999 – 2012 for a fascinating view of the changes in breeding bird levels over a 13-year period. BCN is in the middle of collating the breeding bird survey’s data between 2013 – 2020 and will produce its next trends report later this year.

Plenty of great monitoring sites need great monitors, so click the link above and sign up to be a BCN bird monitor. BCN will provide training to new bird monitors.